walk and talk therapy

I often ask my students a simple question: What were you
doing the last time you had a good idea? Whatever they answer, I say: “Do more
of that and you’ll have more good ideas.”

So what are they doing when they have good ideas? A fair
number – often a majority – are walking. Taking a break and going for a walk stimulates
our thinking in ways that produce interesting and novel ideas. Walking takes a
minimum amount of conscious effort; we have plenty of mental bandwidth left for
other interesting thoughts. Walking also provides a certain amount of
stimulation. The sights and sounds and smells trigger memories and images that
we can combine in novel ways. By moving our bodies slowly, we create thoughts
that move much more quickly.

Going for a walk with a friend, colleague, or loved one can
also help us create richer, deeper conversations. Walking stimulates novel
thoughts; if a companion is beside us, we can share those thoughts immediately.
The back-and-forth can lead us into new territory. A good conversation is not
just an exchange of existing ideas. Rather, it produces new ideas – and walking
can help.

Walking can also help us have difficult conversations. The
key here may be our posture and proximity rather than walking per se. When we
walk with another person, we are typically side-by-side, not face-to-face. We’re
not confronting each other physically. We’re talking to the air, rather than at
each other. We’re slightly insulated from each other, which makes it easier to
both make and receive blunt statements.

According to Walk-And-Talk therapists like Kate Hays, walking can also enhance traditional psychotherapy sessions. Walking with a therapist “…spurs creative, deeper ways of thinking often released by mood improving physical activity.” Walking seems especially helpful when the conversation is between a parent and, say, a teenager. We feel close, but not intimidated. (Side note: we often describe deep conversations as “heart-to-heart” but rarely describe them as “face-to-face.”)

What else can walking do? It’s an “active fingerprint.” As the MIT Technology Review puts it, “… your gait [is} a very individual and hard-to-imitate trait.” In other words, the way you walk uniquely identifies you.

Clearly, we can use gait-based identification for positive
or negative ends. With so many security cameras in place today, we’re rightly
concerned about facial recognition as an invasion of privacy. But we can hide
our faces with something as simple as a surgical mask. Disguising the way we
walk is much more difficult.

On the other hand, think of a device – perhaps a smart phone
– that can uniquely identify you based solely on your gait. You put your phone
in your pocket and walk along; it “knows” who you are. Rather than depending on
fingerprints or passwords, the device simply monitors your gait. One benefit is
convenience – you don’t have to enter a password every time you want to use the
device. The second benefit is perhaps more important: security. A thief could
steal your password or even an image of your fingerprint. But could they
imitate your gait? Probably not.

What else is walking good for? Oh, simple things like health,
flexibility, weight loss, mental acuity, sociability, and so on. I’d like to
hear your stories about the benefits of walking. Just send me an e-mail. I’ll
read them after I get back from my walk.